The 12 Steps for Everybody [Step 6]

¡Hola! Everybody...
Thursday is actually my hump day. It’s the longest day of the week for me and also the most strenuous. Thursdays I run my women's prison workshop at a women's facility and that's always a challenge. Later, in the evening, it’s my men’s group. I am fortunate in that it’s a labor of love. I’ll be away for most of the day. Make it a great day, people, there's a vicious rumor going around that tomorrow isn’t guaranteed.

I forgot to post something on the 6th step in June...

* * *

-=[ Willingness ]=-

We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

The readiness is all.
-- William Shakespeare

I believe that the concept of willingness is one that isn’t given its due -- especially when it comes to relationships. Willingness here not being the narrowly defined ego-will we might think of when we think of “will.”

Willingness is important enough in everything we endeavor whether it be spirituality, self-improvement, learning, relationships, etc. Our willingness or lack thereof, is key in all our activities.

But because of the nature of this post, I'll try to confine my reflection in the area of human relations.

I remember reading somewhere, or someone telling me (I forget which), that it was not enough for me to believe, that I had to be willing to believe. At that time, I was a bit confused about this, “Do this mean I must muster up my willpower?” I asked myself. This was during my early process of attempting a relationship with myself, which I will label here my spiritual journey.

Over time, I have come to understand willingness differently. For me, willingness entails two important components. One is surrender, the other acceptance.

Surrender/ Acceptance

By surrender I don’t mean hopelessness or humiliation, or “giving up.” Surrender, in this context, is knowing, in a very deep sense, that the concept of control is flawed -- ineffective. Surrender in this sense is clearing the way to create an open space and preparing myself to be in more harmony with the world. Realizing that there are aspects of my self and my loved ones over which I have no control, I can become ready to be changed by surrendering to this truth. In surrender, I become ready (willing) to be changed.

That makes all the difference...

I can be wrong, but my own experience has shown me that love, true love, is about change, about transformation. It’s only when we try to control it that it eludes our grasp. I could be wrong, though.

But surrender is not enough. It’s not true willingness unless it contains another ingredient -- acceptance. When I accept the truth of surrender I am already changed, I am more in line with nature and the universe. I can’t force family harmony into my life, but I can become ready to be harmonious. I can’t make a lasting love appear for me on command -- I can become ready (willing) for such a relationship when the opportunities appear.

This is what I look for most in a relationship. It’s more important than looks, than whether she can cook or not, or her attitude, or her sexual prowess -- all of that is superficial for me. When I see the internet profiles that go on at length about the qualities being sought, I am completely, utterly amazed. Sometimes it seems that some of us are looking for “The One” who will fit our wish list of qualities.

Here’s my Christmas wish list, Santa!

It’s as if we’re still little boys and girls buying into the myth.

But my question to you is really quite simple: are you ready to surrender? Are you truly willing? Willing to become completely vulnerable and naked before yourself? Because what I am trying for is to become ready -- not perfect, nor to satisfy my superficial list of ego needs/ wants. So, my question for you is...

Are you ready?

Love,

Eddie

Warrior

¡Hola! Everybody...
I am not surprised that a significant number of the Pee Party participants are racist and homophobic, but what really got me was that someone actually spit at Civil Rights leader Rep. John Lewis. That’s just plain nasty. I once had the displeasure of being spit at (spat on?). Some woman took exception to something I said and just hurled a glob of spit at me. She didn’t get to hit me, but being the object of such violence is quite unsettling. That someone thought so little of me that they felt it appropriate to spit at me was a complete violation; an attempt to dehumanize me.

* * *

-=[ The Awakened Warrior ]=-

Nothing in life is to be feared; it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.
-- Marie Curie

I sold my son on education using the archetype of the Scholar-Warrior. After watching an old Bruce Lee movie, he wanted to learn the martial arts. Having studied Lee’s original art, Wing Chun, myself, I made a pact with him. We would both study with a master if he took the oath of the Scholar-Warrior. Of course, I made the whole thing up. LOL

Actually, there are precedents for the oath of the Scholar-Warrior. Throughout time and across many cultures, scholar-warriors weren’t just conquerors; they were often learned men and women who were versed in a wide range of disciplines. They were familiar with poetry and the healing arts, for example. They were protectors not destroyers.

We live in a different age, of course, but I would submit that the times we live in are screaming for more Scholar-Warriors to come forth. We cannot count on our leaders and government to be brave on our behalf; they are beholden to legal fictions (aka Corporations) endowed with the rights of personage. I would say that a failure of courage all around is at the root of most our problems today. Doing the right thing is rewarding in and of itself. Scholar-Warriors do not look for credit...

The word courage comes from the French coeur, meaning “heart.” Courage is a power that comes from the integration of the heart and brain. Brave, on the other hand, comes from the word for barbarous and was used by the Romans to describe the courage of the “wild people.”

For me, courage is the willingness to embrace challenge. Courage isn’t a single trait so much as a combination of a range of qualities: willingness, persistence, intent, bravery. Real courage faces reality head on and when change is called for, accepts the need. It also calls for intelligence in that it calculates whether the means justifies the ends.

The irony is that seemingly unremarkable individuals commit some of the most courageous acts. Julia Butterfly Hill was only twenty-three when she climbed 180 feet into an ancient redwood. She lived in the tree for two years, saving it from destruction and in the process inspiring a generation of environmental activists.

I tried to teach my son that within each of us there lies a sleeping scholar-warrior and that part of our life’s purpose is to awaken that warrior. Sometimes it takes an extreme situation for the inner warrior to emerge. Many of the heroes we celebrate were initially reluctant warriors taken by surprise.

I had a friend, Freddie (who has since passed away), who with no thought to his own safety acted on a situation. It was late at night and he was on his way to the corner bodega when he came upon a rape in progress. Without hesitation he tried to save the young woman. The cowards turned on him, beating him so badly that, among other serious injuries, they broke his eye socket, causing him to lose sight in that eye. Freddie was one of the funniest people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing and when asked, he said he wasn’t a hero. For him, he was just doing what needed to be done.

I don’t consider myself a hero. I am just a son of the human species who was taught that an injustice to one person is an injustice to all. If I am a scholar-warrior at all, I am a warrior for Truth.

Today, we’re at the political mercy of a relatively small group of bullies. This is how I view most of what goes under the heading of the Right Wing in America today. Much of what they do is based in fear and loathing. That woman spit at me because she didn’t see me as a human being but as a receptacle for everything she hated. To her I was a thing; I was the “other.” Her fear and ignorance compelled her to see me as a scapegoat for all her frustrations. Bullies bully because they are rarely confronted, growing bolder with time. Push back against a bully, and his or her fear stands exposed. A scholar-warrior can stand up to them.

Lucky Babcock is an example of a spontaneous scholar-warrior. One day she was minding her own business looking out her window when she saw a man throw a woman to the ground and rip her blouse off. Lucky, then sixty-six years old, grabbed her cane and raced down two flights of iron stairs. “I felt like I was flying. I put my hands on the rails and just threw myself down four steps at a time.” She used her cane as a club and drove the man off.

Compassion is a powerful motivator. Scholar-warriors develop a passion for compassion. The compassionate are the true protectors of the earth, moved enough to take a principled stand to wage war against injustice.

A newspaper editor in Uruguay who agreed to a duel with an irate police inspector announced he would turn up without a weapon. He was challenged after his newspaper reported the officer was involved in transporting contraband. “I am not going to bear arms against another human being,” he stated. He stood convention on its head and as a result, he gained the support of the press, many politicians, and much of the public. The exposure resulted in a power shift that saw a new party formed and a new president elected.

I could tell the stories of countless reluctant scholar-warriors who almost never get any coverage, but they all seem to share the same quality of people who simply did what needed to be done.

If everybody who cared actually participated, the world would change. But we can’t count on other people -- only ourselves. If we each do our part, who knows? But if we don’t, I think we know what will happen -- it’s happening now. I’ll tell you today what I tried to teach my son not too long ago. The task of the scholar-warrior is to persist in the face of the greatest opposition. Even if our efforts turn out to be for nothing at one level, our actions still create ripples of effect. Courage isn’t risking our selves for what we believe in, my friends. It’s letting go of the belief that there’s something to risk.

Love,

Eddie

Surrender (The First Step)

¡Hola! Everybody...
So, I began this series last year and I think I stopped at Step Four. I’m going to revive this and see if I can finish it out. I’ll be gone all day working with the women at Rikers Island... Y’all be good, now! LOL

* * *

This is for all those who still suffer needlessly, not knowing there is a way out. To you I offer my gratitude and love...

Every month, I will post my strengths, hopes, and experiences on one of the 12 steps of Narcotics Anonymous. What follows is a narrative of my journey toward healing. I don’t know if this will work for another, but if you were to ask me, this is how I recovered my life. My story is a narrative of a life lived on the edge -- extreme -- and you might find it hard to identify with some of its elements. All I ask is that you try to identify with and not compare my story. Listen to the message and not the mess.

I believe all people can benefit from a rigorous application of the 12 steps and I offer this in the spirit of hope.

-=[ Surrender ]=-

“We admitted we were powerless over our addiction, that our lives had become unmanageable.”

-- The First Step of Narcotics Anonymous

In the first step, I came across two words I had some issues with: powerless and unmanageable. I also didn’t notice at first that every step began with the word “We.” I was a loner; “we” wasn’t a word I used much. Everything was about me. They say an addict is an egomaniac with low self-esteem, and I believe that was how I felt.

Let me just say that 12-step recovery is about action. Every step involves growth, exploration, and action. I think people have huge misconceptions about 12-Step Fellowships. People in recovery like to say that the first step is the only step you have to get perfectly. I disagree, recovery is an ongoing process, and my understanding of the first step expands as I grow. However, there is a level of acceptance necessary for this step. But I get ahead of myself…

There are several powerful psycho-spiritual factors at work in the first step. First, there is an admission. Admitting to a problem has become a popular notion in our culture that first came to prominence in the recovery community. Admitting touches on the first spiritual principle of the first step: honesty. However, admitting means nothing without acceptance. For example, I had no problem admitting I was an addict; I could be honest about that! LOL That and $2 got me on the train, which is another way of saying that by itself it was worthless. It wasn’t until I embraced another core spiritual principle of the first step, acceptance, that I was then able to make changes in my life.

The more meetings I made, the more I heard my own story from the lips of others who were honest about themselves. I began to see that I had a lot in common with these people when it came to my relationship to addiction. It took me a long time to come to grips with powerlessness. I was raised to think of myself as powerful. I was taught that if I just exerted my will on any issue, that I could overcome anything in the world. If I had enough cojones and worked hard enough, I could have power over anything.

Besides, it wasn’t my addiction that was the problem, it was everyone else! If only other people got their shit together, and external situations in my life mended themselves, I wouldn’t be in such a fix. The problem with my thinking was that it involved exerting willpower. The problem with my willpower was that it was warped. The more willpower I exerted, the more fucked up my life became. I tried everything: using only on the weekends, snorting instead of using needles, drinking instead of using other drugs, using only certain drugs in certain combinations, etc. No matter what I tried, I always ended up in the same place: all fucked up.

If the only tool you have is a hammer, then everything begins to look like a nail. For me to begin my journey, I first had to surrender. In fact, as I look back now, the whole process of recovery is one long, beautiful, liberating process of surrendering.

For me, the first step is like the beginning of a hero’s journey. In the archetype of the hero, most heroes begin reluctantly, and then forces beyond their control propel them past their everyday lives into a journey of personal change and renewal. Like most addicts, I was unaware of aspects of myself -- my feelings, for example, and the wreckage I was creating. The first step was a tool I could use in my quest for self-knowledge.

Admitting to powerlessness took me years.

Accepting that admission brought me to the gates of healing and sanity. That was also about another core spiritual principle: willingness. It’s often called the HOW (honesty, openness, and willingness) of recovery.

The first step is not about defeat. It says powerlessness, not hopelessness. We have no power over many things. Take the weather, for example. You can’t stop the rain, but if you take the time to stop, look, and listen, you may come to realize that using an umbrella is a lot better that railing against the elements. We have no power over how others act or think, but yet we spend enormous amounts of time and energy trying to exert control over other people. We don’t even have power over our own emotions, but we can learn to relate to them differently.

The first step is really about admitting powerlessness over living in the extremes. Try fighting the rain, or better yet, a hurricane, and you’ll get a sense of what it is to fight addiction. You have to surrender.

As part of taking the first step, you take an inventory of the consequences of your addiction. For me this meant documenting the jobs I lost, the people I hurt, and most of all, the harm I did to myself. In this way, I could no longer deny the unmanageability of life as an active addict. This was a hard nut to crack because I never wanted to admit my life was unmanageable. I had it together, I used to like to think, I just went a little overboard sometimes.

I also discovered the insanity of the obsession that led to the compulsion and how my fight would be fruitless until I surrendered. If you're fighting an inner war, then someone has to lose. If you're fighting an inner war, it follows, you will always lose.

Taking the first step clearly showed me that my thinking had nothing to do with reality. There were countless times, for example, that I would experience a blackout. With a blackout you can sit down one minute and the next thing you know you missed an entire episode of your life – while awake. It’s like what a time jumper would feel. One minute you’re in one place and the next, you’re somewhere else and you don’t know what the fuck is going on. One time I came out of a blackout and I had a whole party-full of people wanting to kick my ass and I had no clue why. It seems I propositioned the bride-to-be (it was an engagement party) and that kinda pissed a few people off. I once came out of a blackout in a different state and different year! LOL!

And still I couldn’t admit my powerlessness. It wasn’t that something was wrong with me, it was those damned stuck up ma’fuccas, and besides, I know that bitch wanted me! Most of all, the first step is the beginning of the doing away of denial. I had to be brought my knees -- a hopeless addict and then to institutions and even close to death -- and still I wouldn’t admit my powerlessness. There was definitely a lot of evidence of unmanageability in my life. Shit, I attempted suicide at least once. What “normal” person can say that? More than anything, I was addicted to insanity.

Oh, and yes, I’ve kicked more habits than I can remember. I just could never stay stopped. Addiction, I soon learned, was not about using. I would get “clean” and chill for six-seven months, but when I started again, it was as if I never stopped. My last day as an active addict, I had spent $300 and I was on the street (released from an institution) fourteen days. So I went from clean to a $300-a-day habit at the drop of a hat. I would say that’s unmanageable, don’t you? LOL

However, there are other ways our powerlessness and unmanageability can manifest itself. Whether it’s food or cigarettes, or relationships, I think we can all look where we’re slowly killing ourselves. I believe we all can identify with the need to exert control and the denial of powerlessness. I use my life as an example because the extreme manner in which I lived makes it easier to illustrate my points, but we all have the dark places where we butt our heads.

Today, I apply the first step to many things in my life, especially in relationships and with certain behaviors. Addictions like to migrate. You might be able to kick the heroin or the alcohol, but then you see people acting out sexually or financially. If you don’t do the work, then you’ll continue to be in the grips of addictive behavior. The first step stipulated that I was powerless over my addiction. Addiction is not about a substance, but about a way of thinking.

In the end, I began to think of the first step as something similar to the concepts of Aikido or Wing Chun, two martial arts that stress the importance of never meeting force with force. In a sense, the first step is about learning to flow with the forces of life instead of fighting all the time. It’s learning to transform difficult emotions into opportunities for healing. It’s knowing that you can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.

Love,

Eddie

Resources:

Alcoholics Anonymous: Official website

Narcotics Anonymous: Official website

Recovery USA, llc: Recovery USA, llc is an online resource for those seeking recovery information, community connections, and high-quality 12 Step Recovery Supplies for Alcoholism and Drug Addiction.

Sober Recovery: The Alcoholism and Addictions Resource Guide. Our Sober Community is always open 24 hours a day with helpful moderators in our message boards and Sober Forums.

Alano: The Online Alano Club is a nonprofit association intended as a resource for Alcoholics Anonymous® members and groups, as well as any individual who has a desire to stop drinking. Members from other 12-Step programs, especially the Al-Anon Family Groups, also are welcome.

NA/AA Recovery Zone: NA AA Recovery Zone is dedicated Recovering Alcoholics and Addicts. Site features NA and AA Page, 12-Step meeting lists, Recovery Tools, Personal Stories, Recovery Links and Recovery Downloads.

12 Step Radio: A great site for Recovery Music, Artist Interviews, Online Communities, Links and Resources, and more...

Are You Ready?

¡Hola! Everybody,
Thursday is actually my hump day. It’s the longest day of the week for me and also the most strenuous. Today, my “girls” graduate – always an emotional event. Then tonight it’s my men’s group, which has almost completely turned over with new participants. I am fortunate in that it’s a labor of love for me. I’ll be away for most of the day. Make it a great day, people, there's a vicious rumor going around that tomorrow isn’t guaranteed.

* * *

“The readiness is all.”
-- William Shakespeare

I believe that the concept of willingness is one that isn’t given its due -- especially when it comes to relationships. Willingness here not being the narrowly defined ego-will we might think of when we think of “will.”

Willingness is important enough in everything we endeavor whether it be spirituality, self-improvement, learning, relationships, etc. Our willingness or lack thereof, is key in all our activities.

But since this is a “Relationships” blog post, I'll try to confine my reflection in the area off human relations. I remember reading somewhere, or someone telling me (I forget which), that it was not enough for me to believe, that I had to be willing to believe. At that time, I was a bit confused about this, “Do this mean I must muster up my willpower?” I asked myself. This was during my early process of attempting a relationship with myself, which I will label here my spiritual journey.

Over time, I have come to understand willingness differently. For me, willingness entails two important components. One is surrender, the other acceptance.

Surrender/ Acceptance

By surrender I don’t mean hopelessness or humiliation, or “giving up.” Surrender, in this context, is knowing, in a very deep sense, that the concept of control is flawed -- ineffective. Surrender in this sense is clearing the way to create an open space and preparing myself to be in more harmony with the world. Realizing that there are aspects of my self and my loved ones over which I have no control, I can become ready to be changed by surrendering to this truth. In surrender, I become ready (willing) to be changed.

That makes all the difference...

I can be wrong, but my own experience has shown me that love, true love, is about change, about transformation. It’s only when we try to control it that it eludes our grasp. I could be wrong, though.

But surrender is not enough. It’s not true willingness unless it contains another ingredient -- acceptance. When I accept the truth of surrender I am already changed, I am more in line with nature and the universe. I can’t force family harmony into my life, but I can become ready to be harmonious. I can’t make a lasting love appear for me on command -- I can become ready (willing) for such a relationship when the opportunities appear.

This is what I look for most in a relationship. It’s more important than looks, than whether she can cook or not, or her attitude, or her sexual prowess -- all of that is superficial for me. When I see the internet profiles that go on at length about the qualities being sought, I am completely, utterly amazed. Sometimes it seems that some of us are looking for “The One” who will fit our wish list of qualities.

Here’s my Christmas wish list, Santa!

It’s as if we’re still little boys and girls buying into the myth.

But my question to you is really quite simple: are you ready to surrender? Are you truly willing? Willing to become completely vulnerable and naked before me? Because what I look for is someone who’s ready -- not perfect, nor someone who satisfies my superficial list of ego needs/ wants. My main question is...

Are you ready?

Love,

Eddie

PS: BTW, this was part of my 6th Step